


Burned in Effigy

by Kyrios (orphan_account)



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Everyone Needs A Hug, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Walks On The Beach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-29
Updated: 2017-04-29
Packaged: 2018-10-25 12:29:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Kyrios
Summary: It annoys him that Komaeda avoids looking at his mismatched eye, until it doesn't.





	Burned in Effigy

**Author's Note:**

> My first venture into SDR2 fic, so characterisation might be a little off. Sorry about that!
> 
> Also known as: Sad Boys Go For A Walk, Bad Feelings Unearthed

Sometimes, Hinata considers asking Naegi to send him a single green contact lens. While everyone takes it in stride and even makes jokes about the whole Kamukura thing, not that Hinata allows them to, there's one person on the island who seems terrified of the mismatched red eye.

Komaeda can walk around with a rotting corpse hand for months, but not handle some mild heterochromia, apparently, and it gets on Hinata's nerves more than he'd like to admit. And he likes Komaeda, he really does, but his life is too stressful and he'd rather die than add that to his ever growing list of problems.

If Kamukura is still part of him, Hinata hopes he comes up with some solution to perpetual annoyance at everyone and life in general with that stupid brain of his. Theirs? He doesn't know or care enough to think about it.

He flops face-first onto his mattress. He doesn't bother to take off his jeans or shoes. That takes stamina he simply doesn't have, not after an entire day of helping Tsumiki out and tiptoeing around her self-esteem problems.

-

Hinata wakes up because someone's really set on knocking on his door at seven in the morning, whoever that is. “Come in!” He calls out, before remembering the door is locked and feeling profoundly dumb for it. He reluctantly pushes himself off the bed and greets the person on the other side.

“Good morning, Hinata-kun!” Komaeda says. He sounds chipper, but he's still avoiding looking at Hinata's face with everything he's got.

“You can look at my face, you know,” Hinata sighs.

“I would rather not, Hinata-kun, but thank you!” Hinata doesn't know how Komaeda manages to sound so nonchalant saying that of all things. “I'm on laundry duty, so I've come to pick up anything you need washed!”

“If I give you my pile of dirty clothes, will you look at my face without pulling a strange expression?”

“I've told you no already, Hinata-kun,” Komaeda repeats. Hinata wonders when he went from immediately obeying to actually telling him no. He knows Komaeda's crashing and burning self-esteem is a horrible thing to miss, but he's just so tired of this.

“Alright,” Hinata says. He picks up random shirts from the floor and gives them to Komaeda—he doesn't actually care enough to have them washed, but he needs an excuse to keep Komaeda in his room for longer. Not that he's willing to admit that.

Komaeda smiles, still pointedly staring at the floor, and turns to leave the cottage.

“Wait!” Hinata calls, really stupidly, and regrets it as soon as he hears the word come out of his own mouth. “Can I just ask why?”

“Mioda-san took my usual cleaning spot,” he says. Hinata rolls his eyes. This isn't Komaeda being dense because he never talks to anyone. It's Komaeda deliberately pretending to be dense.

“You know what I mean.”

Komaeda sets the pile on the floor and crosses his arms. It's wildly different from his personality in the Neo World Program, and Hinata can't tell if that's a good thing. “I'm sure I don't, Hinata-kun.”

“Why do you just—not look at me? My face? This red eye?” He blinks, as if emphasising his point. “Is it really so disgusting? Because I've been considering asking Naegi for contact lenses, and I'd hate to bother such a busy guy.”

“Naegi-kun really is busy,” Komaeda echoes. He then seems to realise something. “Did you seriously contemplate going through that trouble just for someone like me, Hinata-kun? I'm incredibly flattered,” he puts a hand to his chest, dramatic as always.

“Please, please just answer the question,” Hinata begs. He's running on four hours of sleep and he really has no qualms regarding his quickly dwindling dignity. Kamukura might've been good at killing and analysing people, but Hinata himself is better at making people feel sorry for him, so…

He really is pathetic.

Komaeda looks up for the first time in ages. Their eyes meet and there's something weird in Komaeda's face, almost like he's fighting something inside him. Maybe it's the urge to look away.

“You really don't get it, do you, Hinata-kun?”

Hinata doesn't lie. “I don't,” he says. “But I want to get it. That's why I'm asking.”

“Alright,” Komaeda gives in. “Let's go on a walk through the beach and I'll tell you everything.”

-

It's strange to see Komaeda without his parka. His arms are covered in scars that make Hinata's chest tighten, but he's not ashamed of them at all. He's gained some weight despite his health issues acting up, all thanks to Tsumiki, and instead of the ugly amputation job, there's a shiny prosthetic Komaeda seems proud of.

Hinata realises, terrified, that he finds Komaeda very good looking. Cute, his brain supplies, which he chooses to ignore.

“So, Hinata-kun,” Komaeda speaks up. “Do you wish to know why… it… bothers me?”

He can't even call the eye an eye. “Yeah,” Hinata says. “Go ahead.”

Komaeda keeps his head down. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Back then, when I was… working for her,” he says. “He wasn't exactly the nicest to me.”

Hinata knows that, of course he does, but hearing it loud doesn't help the case at all. He wants to scream, to tell the guy who's still lurking in the nooks and crannies of his soul, that he's wrong about so many things.

“Once,” Komaeda says, and it's heavier, choked up this time, “he… not he. You.”

That makes Hinata's heart sink. He feels so guilty for being angry at Komaeda.

“You looked at me with those eyes, the same one you wear right now,” he continues. Hinata reflexively raises a hand to cover his red eye. “You didn't even know my name, but you made me watch. You and Enoshima—”

Kamukura hadn't even known Komaeda's name.

“Shut up!” He doesn't recognise his own voice.

Hinata can't do this. The weight of everything he's done piles upon his shoulders and he feels like Atlas trying to hold the sky up. He's so disgusted with himself, wants to throw up thinking of this dirty cop out.

It hadn't been him, except it had. It's Hinata's hands that have blood on them, it's Hinata's eyes that stared down at Komaeda like he was waste at the bottom of his shoe, it's his mouth that praised Enoshima Junko like she was everything.

He doesn't deserve this guilt. Hanamura and Tsumiki have so much to live with. Komaeda has been thrown around like a doll for months. Hinata is lucky, he's gone through nothing—

“Hinata-kun!” Komaeda's voice snaps him out of it. He holds Hinata's shoulders, but Hinata's entire body feels so numb he barely notices.

Hinata tries to focus on Komaeda, looks at his grey eyes and holds onto that like an anchor. Not the servant who watched him debauch Enoshima. Komaeda, who's free to do whatever he wants. Not the kid who had torn himself open with a spear. Komaeda, who's alive and okay by his side.

He drinks the water Komaeda offers him, holds back the urge to sick up, washes his face so he feels lucid and proper again.

-

They sit down and stare silently at the sea for a while. The sun sets and Hinata is alright.

-

“I think I just want to get rid of those memories, Hinata-kun,” Komaeda says. Hinata doesn't say anything, but he hopes it's obvious he agrees.

Komaeda gets a stick from the ground. He uses it to draw on the sand, a shaky circle with a couple of tiny dots and a crooked line. It takes Hinata a while to realise Komaeda is drawing Kamukura—no, that's me, he corrects himself. He's really trying to come to terms with that.

“Now we wait,” Komaeda says. Hinata nods, trying to look solemn but probably having a different effect entirely, because it makes Komaeda giggle. “Here it comes.”

He takes Hinata's hand in his own. The cold of the prosthetic makes Hinata feel warmer somehow.

A wave comes rushing towards them. It swallows everything in its path until it washes over the doodle of Kamukura on the sand.

It's gone.

Hinata squeezes Komaeda's hand. He knows that, logically, Kamukura is always going to live in some part of him. In the part of him that can perform medical procedures and the side that's able to solve the mysteries of the world, all by himself. He's going to live in the history he's written, the period of despair he's ruled over.

But maybe, just maybe, that drawing represents a fresh start for him.

Not the boy who had been tricked by the academy. Hinata, who has Komaeda sitting by him and grinning. Not the man who ruined the world. Hinata, who's a genius by every definition of the world, but hates to hold proper conversations. Not Enoshima’s partner. Hinata, who's part of a bigger group now, who has friends standing by him.

-

There's always time to make new memories. 


End file.
